Richard Gage’s Asterisk
by Michael Wolsey
www.visibility911.com

March 29, 2011

Anyone who knows Richard Gage, AIA very well or has worked with him, knows that Richard insists that when you cite his name anywhere, whether  in voice or print, that you include his title AIA, which stands for American Institute of Architects.  I assume it’s much like a Dr. following his name with the letters PhD and is obviously important to Richard for whatever reasons.    Those of us who know, always include the AIA tag when formally referring to Richard.   We know that if we do not, Richard will be quick to correct us!

Unfortunately, Richard now has another inclusion in his title; an Asterisk.

In early 2009, I learned that Richard Gage, AIA and founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth had given a written endorsement of a new documentary about the September 11^th Pentagon attack titled National Security Alert.  This film was being aggressively promoted by two people, Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis who call themselves the Citizen Investigation Team or CIT.  Craig and Aldo were apparently seeking written or verbal endorsements of their film from high profile members of the 9-11 Truth Movement.[1] At some point, they had approached Richard and he agreed to give them a statement.    Richard’s written endorsement reads as follows:

“The exhaustive effort by Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis of Citizen Investigation Team to contact, record, document, and analyze numerous first-hand eyewitness accounts of the actual flight path of the airliner at the Pentagon on 9/11 has been long overdue, but worth waiting for.  The evidence they have uncovered and compiled in their DVD “National Security Alert” deserves serious attention – particularly in light of what we now know about the explosive destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises that day.”

Prior to Richard’s endorsement of CIT, I knew about Craig and Aldo and their kooky theory that speculates that Flight 77 flew over the Pentagon.  I confess that I didn’t really pay that much attention to them.  I consider CIT’s work to be counter to the truth and believe that unsubstantiated claims of truth based on dishonest research and methods and speculation actually hurts our efforts at achieving a new 9-11 investigation.   It was also a highly held belief that in most cases, it’s best as a movement to ignore disruptions such as these, which is what I did with CIT.

With much fanfare, CIT boasted their high profile endorsers to as much of the movement as would listen and used these peoples’ names as an appeal to authority [2] to further promote their film.  I saw this behavior as extremely dishonest and was very disappointed in Richard and the others. [3]  I considered this a tipping point and a place where 9-11 activists could no longer ignore CIT.  Since then, we have published several podcasts as well as articles on the topic at visibility911.com. [4]

In response, I personally contacted Richard and some of the other endorsers with polite, yet firm emails asking them if they knew the whole story behind CIT.  I urged them to look further into Aldo and Craig if they had not done so in the beginning, and reconsider their endorsements of what I considered to be the worst disinformation in the 9-11 movement history.    I also had a chance to sit down with Richard face to face when he was in Denver in August of 2009.

My biggest concern was that Richard’s endorsement of CIT was helping CIT’s credibility and hurting his own.   It is my opinion that there is very strong evidence to support the Controlled Demolition hypotheses at the World Trade Center on 9-11.  Richard and his organization AE911T had gained much credibility over the years in this area.  I did not want to see this hard work discredited by association with CIT and I saw this as a real possibility.  I informed Richard of my concerns, as well as why I believe what I do.  I was certainly not alone in my critique of CIT and I know Richard was hearing from many others on this topic.  After spending over an hour and a half talking on this, Richard admitted to me privately that he had probably made a mistake with regards to CIT but still failed to fully retract his endorsement.

In December 2009, Richard issued a “clarification” of his CIT statement, and in February of 2011, after educating himself about who Craig and Aldo really are, issued his “complete withdrawal of support” for CIT and their film.

Personally I welcomed this withdrawal of support by Richard, although I wished he hadn’t given them the statement in the first place.  I argued for a long time that the damage had been done, and that even if Richard took back his support from CIT, that they would never remove his name or words from their website.  This was even a prediction I made privately after Richard issued the withdrawal;  repeat, that CIT will NEVER remove his name or endorsement from their website.

Since then, I have from time to time checked back to the “Praise for Citizen Investigation Team” webpage to verify my prediction.  It is no great surprise to me, nor should it be to anyone familiar with CIT’s methods, that Richard’s endorsement continues to be posted at the CIT website along with the others.  The only difference now is that Richard’s words are now followed by a big red Asterisk which is actually a link to another page at the website which contains a long and wordy response by CIT to Richard’s withdrawal of support.  The link is neither prominent or easy to see.  It is linked only to the Asterisk itself and unless you are looking for it, you won’t see it.

The reasons that CIT will never remove Richard’s statements are not hard to understand.  It’s not because of pride or ego or anything like that.  The main reason, and one of the main goals of disinformation is to discredit good information with bad .  Since Richard and AE911 promote solid information, one way to undermine them is to discredit them.  When Richard, and all the other endorsers gave their names to CIT, they all in one way or another discredited themselves by associating good information with bad; some have called it the “turd in the punchbowl”.  The endorsements provide a strong tie between the good and the bad and these ties will never be broken; they are actually the goal.

Dishonest?  Heck yea, but what else is new with CIT.

Endnotes:

[1] It should be noted here that in my experience in the movement which goes back to 2003, I have never known any film about 9-11 to seek or even need endorsements.  The movement has at times been hungry for tools to use on their friends and new video’s about the 9-11 attacks are no exception.  The success or failure of a film was based on the films’ own merits.

[2]  Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[3]  This list includes David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage, Aidan Monaghan, Barrie Zwicker, Sander Hicks, Kevin Barrett, Peter Dale Scott, and Ed Asner.

[4]  It is not my intention in this essay to discuss the relative dangers in disinformation/ misinformation as it relates to CIT.  This topic has been extensively covered on our podcast and at my blog.

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844 – 1900)

This article is a response to “Is Leading 9/11 Truth Site Working For The Other Side?”, credited to “staff writers” at the Rock Creek Free Press, November 2010 edition, available at: http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com/CreekV4No11-Web.pdf

The “leading 9/11 Truth site” being referred to is 911Blogger.com. The authors of the article critiqued here chose to remain anonymous, and the article’s title doesn’t lend itself to an easily pronounceable acronym. Therefore I will refer to the article’s authors, along with their vocal message board sympathizers and Barrie Zwicker, as The Complainers. We will abbreviate Citizen Investigation Team as “CIT” and their video National Security Alert as “NSA” (noting the irony).

I normally prefer the high ground when it comes to accusations regarding intentions. However, since the Complainers routinely impute sinister motives to their critics, the reader must consider whether that behavior is more consistent with an intention to support or subvert the overall agenda of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Contents

The Complainers’ article, like NSA itself, is fraught with logical fallacies and intellectual dishonesty. Examples are discussed in the following sections:

A Running Ad Hominem…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2

A Key Exaggeration………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 3

False Statements and Exaggerations………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

“There was no [plane] wreckage at the Pentagon”…………………………………………………………………………… 4

“CIT came along and proved [that] the plane flew away”…………………………………………………………………… 7

“The leading 9/11 truth site is actively suppressing CIT’s evidence”…………………………………………………….. 8

“Zwicker is an expert on the subject of infiltration of social movements.”……………………………………………… 9

“Many well respected 9/11 truth activists and scholars have been banned from 911 blogger without

explanation or cause”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9

Refusal to Acknowledge Rational Criticism and Respond to It Rationally……………………………………………… 10

Appeal to Popular Opinion………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11

“Authorities Would Blame Controlled Demolition on Al Qaeda”…………………………………………………………… 11

A Severe Non Sequitur: Poor Political Analysis……………………………………………………………………………… 12

Deceptive Mentions of NSA “Endorsements” or Reviews………………………………………………………………….. 13

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 13

Page numbers refer to the attached PDF.

A Running Ad Hominem

Most of the article consists of a running ad hominem attack, accusing people who run one of the admittedly “leading” 9/11 Truth websites of wanting to cover up mass murder. The Complainers correctly state “it would be surprising if the perpetrators of 9/11 had not attempted to infiltrate and subvert the 9/11 truth movement”, but knowing this alone does not help to identify the infiltrators.  Sorting out the cast of characters requires close examination of the devilish details in order to distinguish among knavish infiltrators, simple fools, and sincere truth-seekers who have been fitted into a well-designed “snitch jacket” in the spirit of COINTELPRO.  The implicit assumption of the Complainers is that criticizing the investigative quality of CIT’s work is the same as working to cover up 9/11 – a manipulative appeal to emotion. The accusation of disloyalty echoes the McCarthyists and their modern-day brethren. It comes from the same playbook used by those who defend the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, for which 9/11 served as the pretext, by calling 9/11 activists “terrorist sympathizers.”

The Complainers drew warnings from 911Blogger moderators, for their vicious and divisive attacks on other researchers, the real cause of the banning of which the Complainers … complain. A moderator told them that this was one of the reasons that they were banned. Yet this explanation brought no humility or lessened outrage to the Complainers. Is their reaction simply an inability to see their own misbehavior as others see it, or something more? Does it perhaps come from the idea that the best defense is a good offense? (Readers with a well-developed sense of consistency will understand my indulgence in some questions regarding the Complainers’ intentions, given that they “went there” first.)

Whatever the reason, many comments supportive or critical of CIT/NSA that violated 911Blogger rules were allowed to stand because of the overwork that is endemic to the 9/11 truth movement. Whatever inconsistencies there might have been, in terms of who was allowed to get away with what, say little or nothing about the moderators’ intentions.

A Key Exaggeration

The Complainers write as though the evidence against a large airliner having flown into the Pentagon were strongly in their favor, and they make vastly exaggerated claims for the power and the clarity of that evidence. Jim Hoffman’s essay, The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory: Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics, published in October 2004, finds that much of the evidence regarding what hit the Pentagon is inconclusive, and is incapable of being made much better than it is. Since the 9/11 Truth movement is working to uncover the truth about 9/11, against a backdrop of blatant lies that constitute an orchestrated coverup, it is important to deal very cautiously with facts.  Deviating from the official story carries a heavy burden of proof, especially in the mind of the public. Speculation lays us open to debunking. Speculation that appears outrageous, and is proved wrong, can paint the whole 9/11 Truth Movement with a broad brush as crazies. We could lose all the hard fought ground we have gained, rendering our solid accomplishments moot. On these grounds, the question of what hit the Pentagon is a self-defeating choice as the focus of any demand for a new investigation. In one of his later analyses Hoffman concludes that “[the] evidence comports with the crash of a Boeing 757.” He added that while “the evidence does not conclusively prove that the aircraft was a 757, much less that it was Flight 77”, “that lack of conclusiveness should not be surprising given the systematic suppression of evidence by authorities.” We need to be willing to let the official story stand unless the proof to the contrary is extremely solid.

For critiques of the deceptive tactics used by CIT, see:

* Victoria Ashley, “To Con A Movement: Exposing CIT’s PentaCon ‘Magic Show’”

* Chris Sarns, “Summary and Analysis of ‘National Security Alert’”

* Shinki and Ed Paik Accounts vs. CIT Methods by Erik Larson

* Dawn Vignola’s Account vs. CIT’s Methods by Erik Larson

Here are three essays and a shorter but very recent piece describing what the Pentagon evidence actually shows. They also contain explanations of the severe disadvantages of focusing publicly on the question of what hit the Pentagon, and the benefits of focusing on the evidence that many other key aspects of the official account of what happened at the Pentagon are demonstrably false:

* Jim Hoffman, “The Pentagon Attack: What the Physical Evidence Shows”

* Michael Green, “How They Get Away With It.”

* Frank Legge, “What Hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on the Credibility of 9/11 Truth”

* Kevin Ryan, “A dozen questions about Flight 77 and the Pentagon that might lead to justice, and one that won’t”

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday, December 3rd 2010
New York Daily News

All of a sudden, Senate Republicans have gone on the attack against providing medical care and compensation to the Forgotten Victims of 9/11 with gross and insulting distortions of the truth.

The biggest lie in the propaganda that Republicans are disseminating to kill the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act: “Congress strongly supports the 9/11 heroes.”

Were that the case, Washington long ago would have met the national obligation to the rescue and recovery workers who responded after the terror attack and suffered serious illnesses and even death as a consequence.

It didn’t happen, largely because the same Republican forces - George W. Bush and countless GOP members of the House and Senate – resisted efforts even to recognize that lung diseases and other ailments were epidemic among thousands of responders.

Now, the House has passed the Zadroga bill and Senate Democrats are pushing hard for a vote by the close of the lame-duck session. So, now, the Republicans, led by Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, are claiming falsely that the U.S. has done generous wonders for Ground Zero workers.

Worse, they intimate that those benefits that the Democrats managed to eke out are riddled with waste, fraud and abuse.

They should stand at the graves of all those whose lungs were fatally destroyed, starting with NYPD Detective James Zadroga, who labored for 450 hours at Ground Zero, and repeat the libel.

They should visit the clinics at Mount Sinai Medical Center where the wheezing sick come for treatment, and repeat the libel.

They should read the record of numerous House hearings that documented how soundly used all federal monies have been, and repeat the libel.

They dare not.

No, instead they distort the truth by pointing out that immediately after 9/11 the government established a compensation fund that paid out $7 billion. They leave out that the fund closed before all the illnesses now at issue became known.

And they torture decency by holding up the fact that some 10,000 responders and survivors will participate in a $625 million settlement of lawsuits. They leave out both that the settlements offered only part recompense and that the monies would be deducted from any payments awarded by a reopened compensation fund.

As for the thousands more who did not sue and are not party to the settlement, well, who cares about them?

Not Enzi and his Republicans.

By the latest head count, the 58 members of the Senate Democratic caucus are united behind the Zadroga bill. A lone Republican, Mark Kirk of Illinois, has joined in support, leaving the bill one Republican vote shy of passage. The lies are meant to give GOP members cover for betraying American citizens who volunteered in service to their country at a dark hour and paid dearly for it.

That is the disgraceful truth. It must not prevail.

Original article here.

Commentary by John Bursill – Contributor and supporter of 911Blogger.com – 10/28/10

“Is 911Blogger.com working for the other side?”  This question has been asked in an article written by the “staff writers” at the Rock Creek Free Press.

I found this article I have attached below rather corrosive and it appears to me some people (“staff writers”) want to perpetuate some sort of civil war within our movement over the Pentagon? Or is it only that many people truly believe that no plane hit the Pentagon and need a plausible scenario to make that theory work for them? And the limiting/censoring of CIT’s exposure and other advocates of no plane theory, is just too much to bear and they have to speak out for their important theory?

Now any reasonable person could accuse 911Blogger.com of being, too careful, too reasonable, too responsible and pro positive public relations, fair enough. But to insinuate they are working for the government is laughable, ridiculous and very hurtful to some very hard working 9/11 Truth Advocates at this site!

So here’s my take on it…”the censorship of CIT”?

Well firstly it is not just 911Blogger.com who has limited or removed support from groups and or people over the years, such as CIT, Webster Tarpley, Kevin Barrett, Pilots for Truth, Jim Fetzer, Morgan Reynolds, Judy Wood and David Shayler to name but a few. This is a very common thing within political movements to stick to the best evidence and information and to only support people who behave civilly and responsibly regarding their dealings with people and subjects associated with the case being advocated. The 9/11 Truth movement is probably the loosest political campaign in history and is so full of misinformed people and theories it is already nearly impossible to get any high level support for such a rabble.

So who gives sites like 911Blogger.com the right to chose who they support? Well in a nut shell, they do! It’s their site and they do what they please based on their experience and the advice they chose to take from the experts they trust around them.

Read the rest of this entry »

via: Facebook

FEAL GOOD FOUNDATION RESPONSE TO NEWS THAT THE PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DOES NOT SUPPORT H.R. 847

Dear Fellow First Responder:

As you may already know, today we have learned that President Barack Obama no longer supports H.R. 847, the Congressional bill that would guarantee funding for health care and research. While this news is stunning, and a complete reversal of his position on this bill during his 2008 presidential campaign, please be assured that the Feal Good Foundation alongside its friends in labor and the N.Y. Congressional Delegation will continue to fight for this bill and to advocate for full Presidential support. Our fight is not over.

Nearly eight and one half years ago we, the First Responder Community, demonstrated our strength, resilience and determination of spirit following September 11th. We must do so again. While the President’s current stance on H.R. 847 represents an obstacle, we have surmounted such obstacles before and will continue to overcome them now. “Never Forget” is more than a campaign slogan or bumper sticker to the men and women who bravely immersed themselves into the toxic Ground Zero air to save the lives of strangers and rebuild New York City and this country. We will “Never Forget” and today I tell all those opposed to H.R. 847 “We Will Never Give Up.”

H.R. 847 is about guaranteed health care treatment, monitoring and research; nothing more, nothing less. We have witnessed First Responder after First Responder fall victim to 9/11 illnesses over the past several years. Just this week another firefighter and friend perished as a result of his heroic actions. While the White House and detractors of H.R. 847 are quick to point out that treatment for First Responders currently exists at the Centers of Excellence, such arguments are missing the central mandate of the bill – guarantees!
The reluctance of the White House to support this bill merely 8 ½ years after the worst terrorist attack on United States soil merely solidifies the need for guaranteed care now. Shall we rely on “discretionary budgetary spending” twenty years from now when the World Trade Center attack is a distant memory to new administrations?
Are we to trust that presidents in the years to come will allocate sufficient funding for treatment and research when we are already being told that current administrations “don’t have the money to make us healthy? We cannot and will not give up hope that this government will recognize its moral imperative to care for the World Trade Center First Responders.

The Feal Good Foundation will not give up its efforts on behalf of the First Responders. It is our sincere hope that you will continue to join us in our quest for justice.

Sincerely,

John Feal

source: New York Daily News

by Michael McAuliff

Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups
By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
The Raw Story

In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated “cognitive infiltration” of groups that advocate “conspiracy theories” like the ones surrounding 9/11.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups.

As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs,” according to the White House Web site.

Sunstein’s article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that “our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a ‘crippled epistemology,’ in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources.”

By “crippled epistemology” Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust.  Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public — the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories.  It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves.  There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however.  The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts.”

Download a PDF of the article here.

Sunstein argued that “government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories.” He suggested that “government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”

“We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI,” Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that “a high-level presidential advisor” would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of “extremist” groups so that it undermines the groups’ confidence to the extent that “new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides.”

Sunstein has been the target of numerous “conspiracy theories” himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting “a second Bill of Rights” that would do away with the Second Amendment.  Sunstein’s recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as “a blueprint for online censorship.”

Sunstein “wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading ‘rumors,’” wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

Original article here.

From 911blogger.com-

“Earlier this year I wrote a review of CIT’s “National Security Alert” in which I recommended that we all take a closer look at the eyewitness accounts supporting the “North path” of American Airlines Flight 77 at the Pentagon. CIT’s investigation includes detailed in-person interviews which appeared quite compelling. As AE911Truth’s focus is the destruction of three buildings at WTC, I didn’t perform an exhaustive review of CIT’s material and methods. My quick statement should not be portrayed as an endorsement of CIT’s conclusion that the airliner ‘flew over’ the Pentagon.”

Richard Gage, AIA, Architect
Founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

See Related Items-

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Jim Hoffman

Visibility 9-11 Welcomes Dr. Frank Legge

The CIT Virus

To Con a Movement- Exposing CIT’s Pentacon ‘Magic Show’

Peter Dale Scott Does Not Endorse the Pentagon Flyover Theory (and Neither Do I)

CIT and Eyewitness Testimony

The Denver Post would be well served to consider the fate of printed propaganda as it relates to the demise of the now defunct Rocky Mountain News.  KBDI has really rattled a lot of cages to be so resolutely attacked by the Denver post here, and now in this bitter and lopsided hit piece by well known Denver columnist Vincent Caroll.   Let Mr. Caroll and the Denver Post hear from you in the most articulate and polite way possible.  -Michael

Carroll: Public TV and the Truthers
by Vincent Caroll
The Denver Post
9-26-09

On the same day the FBI arrested Najibullah Zazi on what would turn out to be damningly detailed evidence of alleged terrorist intentand just three days after the ever-prescient Gary Hart proclaimed, “I don’t think he sounds like a terrorist” — KBDI-Channel 12 aired a couple of 9/11 Truther documentaries as part of a fund-raising drive.

The coincidence last Saturday was both ironic and nauseating. At the very moment when authorities were unearthing what could be the most sinister case of domestic terrorist activity since 9/11, with alleged links to the group that took down the World Trade Center, a local public television station blithely devoted much of its schedule to propaganda claiming al-Qaeda did no such thing.

Not that station management minds. “We’re not trying to capitalize on anyone’s tragedy,” said Shari Bernson, Channel 12′s membership director. “We’ve just got to get more diversity [in programming] out there.”

Besides, she told me, the films ” 9/11: Blueprint for Truth” and ” 9/11: Press for Truth” (along with the equally egregious “America: From Freedom to Fascism”) have been a boon for the station, helping it enjoy “a good year” in fundraising. Indeed, Channel 12, which also aired the shows in August, will probably broadcast them again — although perhaps not until spring.

Meanwhile, Bernson added, Channel 12 remains “the only public station that I know of” that has shown them.

No wonder. ” 9/11: Blueprint for Truth,” featuring Bay Area architect Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, peddles the familiar Truther theme that the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 were the result of controlled demolitions that would have taken months to prepare. Yet in the two-hour version I watched online, Gage laughably insists that he and his colleagues “are not conspiracy theorists.”

“We’re not saying your government did this to you,” Gage explains. “Somebody was responsible for this. Somebody, somewhere on the inside was responsible.”

The “inside”? That sure sounds like government in this context.

Just in case viewers are too dense to figure out the probable culprits, Gage helpfully provides plenty of clues. Remember, he says, 9/11 “served as the pretext for the invasion of two countries in which already more than a million people have perished. Also as the pretext for the loss of many of our cherished liberties here at home in the United States through recent legislation such as the Patriot Act . . . .”

“Is it likely,” he wonders at one point, “that al-Qaeda could have had access to” Building 7, with its sensitive government offices, since it must have been as secure as anything “outside the Pentagon?”

He’s got us there, doesn’t he? Perhaps President Bush himself, along with a crack team of demolition experts from the CIA, personally packed Building 7 and the Twin Towers with explosives in the run-up to 9/11, while Dick Cheney and his Halliburton cronies organized the al-Qaeda dupes who would hijack the planes.

Sounds plausible to me.

And how has the grand conspiracy, which the film suggests includes the major media, been kept under wraps all these years? Why has no one in this vast web of deceit developed pangs of conscience or second thoughts, or called in a film crew for a death-bed confession?

Anticipating such questions, Gage claims “the Manhattan project had thousands of people and was kept quite a secret for a very long time.” By “very long time,” he must mean the brief period before spies like Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass and Theodore Hall began passing classified material to the Soviets.

Channel 12 is a local asset with lots of good programs, and Bernson is no doubt sincere that “we weren’t sitting around trying to figure how to upset the community” when the decision was made to air these films. It’s not even clear the community is upset, given the apparently modest volume of complaints that Bernson reports and the success in fundraising.

Before you know it, even Zazi’s story will no doubt be woven into the fevered folklore that sees a cabal of omnipotent insiders toying with us all. In its own way, that’s almost as scary as what that airport shuttle driver and his friends allegedly intended to do.

Original hit piece here.

E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com

Finally, an apology from the National Geographic Channel
by Kevin Ryan
August 22, 2009

Six days after September 11th, National Geographic Today (NGT) published one of the very first descriptions of the official myth for what happened to the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.[1] This article exaggerated the little known facts about the fires in the towers, equated gas temperatures with steel temperatures, and detailed the long-surviving but incorrect Pancake Theory of “collapse.” Since that time, millions of people have been killed or injured in the 9/11 Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that originated from the official myth about 9/11.[2,3] Fortunately, this week it was announced that the NGT’s parent, the National Geographic Channel (NG Channel), is scheduled to broadcast a new television special covering the science behind the events of 9/11. We can only assume that this new show is meant to correct the record and apologize for the company’s false statements that contributed to the ongoing wars.

Some of the false statements made in that NGT article had to do with an early version of the Pancake Theory for destruction of the buildings. One claim was : “As the steel columns at the core of the Twin Towers collapsed, the floors they supported fell on each other like two stacks of pancakes.” Another statement was more authoritative, saying: “Once the structural support of the upper floors is removed, a few falling floors can bring down an entire building.” The Pancake Theory did not make sense to many people but was tested by my former employer, Underwriters Laboratories (UL), in August 2004. The tests showed that the floors in the WTC buildings could not have pancaked, even when exposed to higher temperatures for longer periods of time than was actually the case. Two years later, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally made clear that its “findings do not support the ‘pancake theory’ of collapse.”[4]

To date, there have been no apologies from any of the media sources that, oftentimes arrogantly, promoted the Pancake Theory as a means to prevent further questioning of the WTC events. But we all know that “National Geographic” is different, right? Actually, some people are unaware that the NG Channel is majority controlled (67%) by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.[5] The National Geographic Society, publisher of the well-known magazine, was a minority partner in creation of the NG Channel, but does not have editorial control over what is produced there. Instead, the News Corporation controls the programming much like it controls Fox News.

In the early article promoting the WTC myth, NGT described how “Jet fuel fires burn unusually hot, and engineers believe the fire may have led to temperatures as high as 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,900 degrees Fahrenheit).” But the truth is that the jet fuel fires at the WTC, which lasted a total of 79 seconds by one expert estimate, and lasted only a few minutes according to NIST, would have been cooler than the later fires fed by office furnishings alone.[6] It has since been admitted by NIST that gas temperatures reached only “as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius.”[7]

Read the rest of this entry »

Decoding Scheuer’s Call for Osama to Kill More Americans
“War on Terror” advocates want civilians to die to justify “War on Terror”
James Corbett
The Corbett Report
6 July, 2009

CIA analyst Michael Scheuer’s recent call for bin Laden to kill more Americans would be shocking if we hadn’t already heard it dozens of times before from other “War on Terror” advocates. “It’s an absurd situation,” Scheuer told FOX News personality Glenn Beck on his program last week. “Only Osama can execute an attack that will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.”

The comments have provoked much shock and outrage among pundits and websites like Jon Stewart and NewsHounds who may have considered him to be on their side. After all, he seemed to be a vociferous and effective critic of the neocons, having authored books like Imperial Hubris and having supported Ron Paul during the 2008 Presidential debates by asserting that 9/11 was merely blowback for American interventionism in the Middle East. With his latest comments, Scheuer is now relegated to the ignoble company of neocon shills like Stu Bykofsky of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who dreamed of another terrorist attack back in 2007 to rally people around the flag (and, presumably, George W. Bush) once again; Donald Rumsfeld, who complained in 2006 that the Bush regime was a victim of its own success in the “War on Terror” and that another terrorist attack was needed to remind people that the war was still necessary; and indeed the entire neocon establishment, who in their 2000 white paper Rebuilding America’s Defenses called for “a catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor” to mobilize the public to get behind their goal of projecting American military influence around the globe for another century. Despite his surprisingly unhelpful attempt to clarify his remarks, Scheuer is now—like all of those who have said that terrorism is needed to bring about political support for their idea—a terrorist himself by very definition.

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Glenn Beck Agrees: “The only chance we have as a country right now is” for bin Laden to “detonate a major weapon” in U.S.

“Glenn Beck nods and agrees with his guest Michael Scheuer that the only way to “save” the US (from illegal immigrants, of course) is for Osama bin Laden to succeed in detonating a weapon on American soil. Scheuer and Beck hit all the conservative buttons, from Mexicans to the mainstream media and the worst of all, Europeans. From the June 30th, 2009 Glenn Beck on Fox News.”

“Last night Glenn Beck’s guest was ex-CIA person Michael Scheuer, who stated that the only hope for the country was for Osama Bin Laden to “deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” Seriously.”

http://gawker.com/5305274/what-this-country-needs-is-a-good-terrorist-at…

YouTube viddy cribbed from: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200906300039

9/11 Truth Movement Rejects Propaganda of Hypocrisy
6/19/2009
911truth.org

We as members of the 9/11 Truth community deplore all forms of hatred and violence, including the unprovoked murderous attack by James von Brunn on June 10, 2009, in the Washington Holocaust museum. We also deplore peddlers of hatred who use such events for their own purposes, such as Glenn Beck, who recently said that von Brunn, because of his attack, was now “a hero in the 9/11Truther movement,” which “would like to destroy the country” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQnfJeUzzKk).

There is no foundation whatsoever for these flagrant lies. Beck intentionally overlooks the fact that he shares Von Brunn’s views on the Federal Reserve (stating “it’s totally fine to speak out against the Fed”), views that von Brunn acted upon when he tried to arrest the Fed’s Board with a bag of weapons in tow. Beck essentially overlooks the fact that von Brunn took action on his White Supremacist views, leading him to murder a Black guard in a Jewish museum. Yet Beck cautions viewers that 9/11 Truth advocates pose a graver threat, and are bent on working with al Qaeda to destroy the nation. (“… people like white supremacists or 9/11 truthers that would also like to destroy the country. They’ll work with anybody they can.”)

Beck ostensibly encourages thinking for oneself, questioning authority and holding people to account when it comes to the Fed, yet when it comes to the crimes of 9/11, the mere act of questioning is treasonous, fraught with potential dangers on a scale that threatens the nation itself. Beck facilitates the unfounded, concerted effort to equate all 9/11 Truth advocates with anti-Semites, a propaganda tactic to minimize and demonize dissenting views. Like von Brunn, Beck advocates hatred for those who hold views counter to his own.

Sign the statement here.

Official story of 9/11 “almost entirely untrue”
Daily Kos
Saturday, May 16, 2009

This episode of Visibility 9-11 welcomes John-Michael Talboo and Stewart Bradley of the blog Debunking the Debunkers.

John-Michael is the creator and administrator of 911debunkers.blogspot.com where he and Bradley debunk the “debunkers” of the 9/11 truth movement. He has been a 9/11 activist since late 2004, and is a grassroots organizer listed on 911truth.org for the state of Indiana, is a member of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth AE911Truth.org video team, and a founding member of the central Indiana chapter of the activist organization We Are Change.

Stewart Bradley is an artist, documentary journalist, and political activist living in Lancaster Pennsylvania who runs an independent mulit-media studio. Stewart was already investigating covert government operations before 9/11 and since 9/11 has re-dedicated himself to exposing the public misconceptions behind the attack. In 2004 he wrote and produced a 9/11 docudrama titled “The Proof”and has been actively promoting 9/11 research through his website, blogs, videos, and internet debates. More at: http://bradleyinfotainment.com

Topics discussed include the “debunkers” take on the new scientific paper, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, and defence thereof.

The MO and possible motives of defenders of the official story is also spoke of, and put into a larger historical context. Mentioned is a declassified CIA memo from April 1967 entitled, Countering Criticism of the Warren Report, which states that one way to achieve this goal is to…

“Employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passage to assets. Our play should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories.”

Direct download: visibility911_debunkers.mp3